Duck Duck Goose: Pop Brixton Gets Yet Another Great Restaurant

Duck Duck Goose
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Everybody must be bored of hearing about another great restaurant opening in SW9 by now. It'd be nice to mix things up by having spotted a dud — but with no respect for narrative tension, the Duck Duck Goose team have added another solid offering to the already stellar food line-up at Pop Brixton.

The decor and menu both draw on the Cantonese canteens and roast meat vendors of backstreet Hong Kong. But there's something a bit Blade Runner 2049 about DDG's orange lighting, compact space and steamed-up, deep-set windows.

We're into the neo-noir vibes, and doubly into the menu. Ducks and pork belly are air dried on-site and roasted in a traditional duck oven, everything cooked in the tiny corner kitchen. Other dishes keeping the small restaurant steamy and fragrant include wok-fried lamb shoulder with cumin and chilli, and a meaty hat-trick of ox tongue, five-spice dusted pork belly and bone marrow.

Our Cantonese BBQ plate is almost overwhelmingly rich: a large platter of duck and roasted pork belly, both in slices of serious, fatty clout. Dipping bowls of pickles, mustard and tart plum sauce keep it skirting (just) on the manageable side of decadent, though we've never appreciated the mouth-cleansing qualities of plain steamed rice so much.

Meaty name notwithstanding, they're just as good at the peripheral, non-meat stuff. Maybe even better. A ginger and plum sour martini leaves us wishing we were in the market for a bigger night and several more of these. A lychee sorbet — doused in sake — is bright, tangy and a welcome blast of freshness after the heft of the BBQ meats. And the prawn toast we start dinner with is the stand-out dish of the night. Heavy with sesame and rich with kewpie mayo, it's crunchy, soft and meaty in all the places you want it to be each of those things.